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KapmonK jF* Wt&t Memorial 

lectures on 3TmmortaIitp, {>mnaii 

Conittct, ana {mman 3Deatin}> 



WHY WE MAY BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER 
DEATH. By Charles Edward Jefferson. 
191Z. 

THREE LORDS OF DESTINY. By Samuel 
McChord Crothers. 1913. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 



KapmonK jF. Wt*t ffitmovM Lecture* 



THREE LORDS OF. 
DESTINY 

BY 

SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(ftfc ttitoer£fte j&re&S Cambrftge 

i9 ! 3 



**$ 



COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published November IQ13 



©C/.A857747 



PREFATORY NOTE 

This volume represents the second of the se- 
ries of Raymond F. West Memorial Lectures at 
the Leland Stanford Junior University. These 
lectures were delivered on April 22 and 23, 19 13, 
by Rev. Samuel McChord Crothers, D.D., of 
the First Unitarian Church of Cambridge, Mass- 
achusetts. The conditions of the lectureship are 
set forth in the following letter from its founders : 

In memory of our beloved son, Raymond 
Frederic West, a student in Leland Stanford 
Junior University, who was drowned in Eel 
River, in California, on January 18, 1906, be- 
fore the completion of his college course, we wish 
to present to the trustees and authorities of the 
Leland Stanford Junior University, at Palo Alto, 
California, the honored Alma Mater of our son, 
the sum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000), to be 
held as a fund in perpetual trust, for the estab- 
lishment of a lecturship on a plan similar to the 

v 



PREFATORY NOTE 

Dudleian Lectures and the Ingersoll Lectures at 
Harvard University. 

By this plan, in each collegiate year, or on each 
alternate year, at the discretion of the Board of 
Trustees, from one to three lectures shall be given 
on some phase of this subject: " Immortality, 
Human Conduct, and Human Destiny ." 

Such lectures shall not form a part of the usual 
college or university course, nor shall they be de- 
livered by any professor or instructor in active 
service in the institution. Such lecturer may be 
a clergyman or a layman, a member of any eccle- 
siastical organization, or of none, but he should 
be a man of the highest personal character and 
of superior intellectual endowment. He shall be 
chosen by the Faculty and the Board of Trustees 
of said University in such manner as the Board of 
Trustees may determine, but the appointment 
in any case shall be made at least six months be- 
fore the delivery of said lectures. 

The above sum is to be safely invested, and the 
interest thereof is to be divided, at the discretion 
of the Board of Trustees, into two parts, the one 
an honorarium to the lecturer, the other for the 
publication of the said lectures or the gratuitous 

vi 



PREFATORY NOTE 

distribution of a number of copies of the same if 
published by the author. 

The manuscript of the course of lectures shall 
become the property of the University, and shall 
be published by the University unless some other 
form of publication is more acceptable. 

The course of lectures shall be known as the 
41 Raymond F. West Memorial Lectures on Im- 
mortality, Human Conduct, and Human Des- 
tiny." 

F. W. WEST, 
MARY B. WEST. 
Seattle, Wash., 

January i8, igio. 



CONTENTS 

I. Courage . i 

II. Skill . 47 

III. Love . 93 



THREE LORDS OF 
DESTINY 

I 

COURAGE 

The significance of the moral life is 
obscured from us by the necessity of 
early teaching. Right conduct is so uni- 
versally necessary that we cannot afford 
to take chances with our children, and 
wait for the occasions when the moral 
law shall flash upon them through " the 
east window of divine surprise." What 
have been the thrilling discoveries of 
the race must be inculcated in the form 
of maxims that appear commonplace. 
Lessons which repentant sinners have 
i 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

learned through the agony of personal 
experience are transformed into habits 
of well-regulated childhood. 

The consequence is that when the 
time arrives amid the tumult of youth, 
when the desire for self-expression and 
self-direction comes, the idea of moral- 
ity is often disassociated from the idea 
of personal freedom. Morality is looked 
upon as something that fetters the will, 
instead of being the way^by which the 
will achieves freedom. It is regarded 
as something established by traditional 
authority and not as a living impulse. 
The youth eager to try his soul knows 
no other way than through rebellion 
against the didacticism which has guided 
him hitherto. 

Let us frankly confess that though 
wiser and more sympathetic education 

2 



COURAGE 

may mitigate this struggle, yet there is 
a difficulty here which is fundamental. 
Moral teaching must of necessity be 
more or less commonplace in form. 
Conduct must be established as habit, 
before its reasons or its importance can 
be appreciated. And there must come 
a time when these habits are criticized 
and when what had been taken for 
granted is questioned. There is no pain- 
less way of passing from the discipline 
of childhood to the freedom of man- 
hood. 

But it is all the more necessary when 
this questioning period comes that prin- 
ciples of Morality and Religion should 
be given a fair chance for consideration. 
This is done only when they are placed 
clearly in relation to the age-long strug- 
gle for freedom. 

3 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

I shall ask you, therefore, to consider 
the nature of the moral life, not so much 
as an escape from sin, as an escape from 
bondage. Indeed sin, from this stand- 
point, is itself a kind of bondage. It is 
the negation of what the New Testa- 
ment calls the glorious liberty of the 
sons of God. There is a point of view 
from which we see all idealistic im- 
pulses as tending in one direction. Eth- 
ics, Religion, Art, Science, Politics, 
Industry, are all phases of one great 
struggle for the liberation of humanity. 
They are attempts to achieve that which 
no creature but man has dreamed of, 
and which every fatalistic philosophy 
declares to be impossible. 

To the fatalist earth is a prison-house 
and we are captives condemned to life- 
imprisonment. Knowledge is only the 
r 4 



COURAGE 

knowledge of the bars across our win- 
dows, and of the walls against which we 
beat ourselves in vain. We are creatures 
taken in a trap. It matters not how we 
conceive the trapper, whether as a per- 
sonal or an impersonal power. The only 
thing certain is that we cannot escape. 
We have ideals, but between them and 
reality a great gulf is fixed. We love, 
we aspire, we feel, we suffer, but we 
cannot achieve. These emotions of ours 
have poignancy for us, but no potency 
to change our destiny. We are acted 
upon, but do not truly act. We origi- 
nate nothing, we change nothing. Does 
the grain of dust T blown about by the 
wind direct itself? No more do we. 
The raindrop falling from the cloud 
obeys a law which is inexorable. So do 
we yield to impulses which we cannot 

5 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

comprehend and which we cannot re- 
sist. When we think we resist, it is 
only because we have yielded to an- 
other power which for the moment is 
stronger. We do what we must. Find 
at any moment the strongest forces and 
you can determine what we must at 
that moment do and be. Could a wave 
of the sea awake to consciousness ere 
it breaks, it would have as much right 
to assert its freedom of motion as we. 

Self - consciousness to the fatalist 
yields no important truth. To say " I 
am " means little if I am an effect, but 
in no sense a cause of anything. 

I am but a voice, 
My life is but a life of winds and tides. 
No more than winds or tides can I avail. 

Human history from this standpoint 
has only the same kind of interest that 
6 



COURAGE 

pertains to a weather report. There is 
no room in it for praise or blame, nor 
for any ordered progress. 

It will be noticed that the argument 
for fatalism is the fascinating but dan- 
gerous argument from analogy. The 
fatalist deals constantly with metaphors. 
He talks about winds and tides, about 
grains of dust and fading flowers and 
wind-swept clouds. All nature furnishes 
resemblances to the life of man. It is 
easy to assume identity. As the tree 
falls, so it lies. The fallen tree cannot, 
by any effort of its own, raise itself. In 
the life of plants and animals we discern 
continuous change, but what creature 
is able to direct the course of its own 
evolution? There is nothing that corre- 
sponds to effective choice. The machine 
moves, but not by its own will. One 
7 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

part depends upon another part. The 
machinery does not repent, nor invent 
new methods, nor does it discover a new 
object for itself. What is our brain but 
a more complicated and delicate ma- 
chine ? Can it transcend in any way the 
limitations of mechanism ? 

At some time or another every one 
must face the fatalistic conception of 
life and hear the old refrain — Vanity 
of vanities, all is vanity. But it makes a 
great difference whether we recognize 
this as a kind of thought from which 
mankind has been slowly emerging, or 
as the sad, inevitable conclusion'toward 
which all severe thinking tends. 

As I have said, the necessary process of 

education tends here to confuse us. We 

begin to live and act where our fathers 

left off. We take for granted what they 

8 



COURAGE 

discovered. Then, when we begin to 
think for ourselves, we retrace their 
course, and rediscover the wilderness 
from which they extricated themselves. 
We Occidentals and Christians have 
been taught in childhood to take for 
granted the value of moral effort. We 
have been subjected to discipline and 
have unconsciously enjoyed its fruits. 
Our wills have been stimulated and en- 
couraged. We have been treated as 
responsible beings, and told that we are 
the makers of our own fortunes. 

Until we began to think for ourselves 
it never occurred to us that there was 
anything remarkable in such teachings. 
They seemed like self-evident truths. 
But when these ancestral beliefs are 
challenged, we are at a loss to give any 
answer for the faith that is not so much 

9 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

in us as imposed upon us. When we 
come upon some book which tells of 
the futility of effort in a world of natu- 
ral law, it seems as if we had come upon 
a new discovery. Now we have reached 
that maturity of thought which brings 
disillusion. The intellect is emancipated 
from its own foolish preconceptions. 
In the clear cold light of reason the 
prisoner sees the hard, unyielding walls 
that shut him in. 

It is here that the history of human 
development is helpful. It at least makes 
clear the direction in which the race 
has been moving. The fatalistic doc- 
trine of the futility of human effort is not 
a new discovery reserved for clever 
young people of our day when they be- 
gin to philosophize. It is the most prim- 
itive form of thought, based upon what 
10 



COURAGE 

is most obvious in human conditions. 
It is a part of the Natural Theology 
which Caliban on his island would 
evolve, when he tried to explain him- 
self and it. 

Of course man seems to be the help- 
less creature of circumstances which are 
beyond his own control. All circum- 
stances are beyond his control. That 
seems evident enough at the first com- 
prehensive glance at his environment. 
Every glimpse which we have of the 
working of the primitive mind reveals 
the mingling of fear and apathy. They 
both arose from the same cause. Fatal- 
ism was not a mere theory but a prac- 
tical principle. The evils that were 
vaguely seen were not to be averted by 
any intelligent and sustained effort. 
They were not within the realm of hu- 
ii 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

man responsibility. They came, and their 
coming could not be prevented. At first 
there was the terrified shrinking and then 
the terrified submission. Caliban fears 
Setebos who tortures him, but above 
him is the still more formidable " quiet" 
that shall "catch and conquer Setebos." 
Above the passions of angry men and 
angry Gods is the impassive Fate, against 
which there is no contending. 

The great significance of human his- 
tory is that men have been slowly 
emerging from this fatalistic habit of 
mind. The doctrine of the futility of 
effort, once universal, has not prevented 
effort being made. And that portion of 
mankind which has made the most de- 
termined and continuous effort has come 
to believe in itself, and to claim the 
lordship of the earth. Out of the accu- 

12 



COURAGE 

mulation of human endeavors there has 
grown a great human faith, which char- 
acterizes the progressive portion of the 
race. It is the faith which we have in- 
herited and whose significance we 
should seek to understand. 

Milton described the intellectual quest 
of his 'day as the attempt " to assert 
eternal Providence and justify the ways 
of God to man." But there is another 
task — or perhaps another way of con-* 
sidering the same task — [to vindicate the 
course of human history and to justify 
the ways of man unto himself. It is to 
this aspect of the high argument that our 
age particularly addresses itself. 

Are human ideals mere illusions, and 
are the efforts to attain them of any sig- 
nificance? Is personal responsibility a 
tremendous fact or a morbid fancy ? Are 

*3 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

we partners in a work of creation, or are 
we accidental results, chance products 
of the play of blind forces ? What should 
be our attitude toward the world? 
Should it be that of those who feel 
themselves to be slaves, or that of those 
who, however weak at the present, are 
struggling' for the mastery? 

We are not dealing with a metaphys- 
ical theory, but are choosing a way of 
life. What is the wise behavior for us in 
a world such as this ? Shall we take the 
world at its face value and yield our- 
selves to its strongest forces, without 
further question ? Is the highest wisdom 
the wisdom of submission to obvious 
facts? Shall we be content to move in 
the line of least resistance, without 
troubling ourselves to ask whither we 
are being borne? To live thus would 

H 



COURAGE 

seem to be to live in accordance with 
nature. It would be to follow the analogy 
of other created things. We are copying 
the behavior of our Brother Fire and 
our Sister Water. The fire burns, the 
water flows, because they must and not 
because they will. 

. Endless have been the experiments 
in this direction. Sages and saints med- 
itating upon the vanity of effort have 
sought to return to calm acquiescence in 
the order of nature. They have tried to 
still desire, to banish ambition, and to 
attain to a state in which they would 
have no will of their own. They would 
be passive in the hands of the master of 
their fate. "Doth the clay say to the 
potter, 'Why hast thou made me thus?'" 
Why should the human clay cherish the 
ambition to remold itself? 

*5 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

But here appears one of the ironies of 
life. To attain to this effortless calm de- 
mands a supreme effort of the will. To re- 
turn to nature demands an arduous pro- 
cess of reeducation. Nature must first be 
idealized before we can realize it. We 
must painfully unlearn what had been 
natural to us. How painful and contin- 
uous is the discipline through which 
Oriental mystics seek to divest them- 
selves of the sense of free agency. They 
have to keep their minds upon the high 
task of not thinking. Any lapse of atten- 
tion would plunge them into the abyss 
of ordinary human feeling. St. Simeon 
Stylites stood upon his pillar to show 
that he had^no will of his own. What an 
example of pure willfulness it was ! 
I As a matter of fact, it is as difficult to 
divest one's self of human attributes, as 
16 



COURAGE 

it is to develop these attributes into 
higher forms. The higher can only im- 
perfectly mimic the lower. And the 
mimicking is not worth the pains. A 
person cannot act precisely as if he 
were a thing. There is something that 
struggles and resists, be it ever so feebly. 
i Even when we conceive of the uni- 
verse and of ourselves as bound by inex- 
orable necessity, we yet dream of free- 
dom. We dream of a life of our own 
choosing where we walk confidently on 
the open road. The free wind blows 
upon us, we meet companions and talk 
together. And when the evening comes, 
we lie down to rest, conscious of achieve- 
ment. We have accomplished some- 
thing, we are further on toward the goal 
we have freely chosen. 

And in our dreams we are creators. 
17 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

We build cities and temples, we carve 
marble, we^ paint pictures, all in obe- 
dience to an inner impulse. And all is 
more beautiful than the material out of 
which it is made. 

r As long as we are content to enjoy 
the dream as a dream, we are still in 
bondage. So the slave dreams, and 
awakes to his misery. We are free only 
in proportion as we are able to transform 
our dreams into realities — in other 
words to realize our ideals. 

What is the first decisive step in the 
direction of spiritual freedom? What 
new power is developed in us that lifts 
us out of the apathy and fear of fatalism ? 

When the Christian is asked the ques- 
tion, he answers, " It is Faith. It is this 
that overcomes the world, and makes 
us free. Is it not written 'The just shall 
18 



COURAGE 

live by faith'?" And if the Christian is 
speaking out of personal experience of 
a new kind of life, and so entering into 
the spirit of the New Testament, he is 
uttering a deep truth. But if he is merely 
repeating by rote a lesson which he has 
been taught by others, he is but darken- 
ing counsel by words. For the chances 
are that he is confused by the ambiguity 
in the word Faith. Faith may be con- 
ceived of as a kind of courage or as a 
kind of knowledge. 

In the great texts of the New Testa- 
ment in its praise, it is clearly conceived 
of as a kind of courage. It is that which 
conquers the fear of the darkness. It 
deals boldly and aggressively with the 
uncertain. It lays hold of what is con- 
fessedly unseen. By faith Abraham went 
out from his father's house, not know- 

*9 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

ing whither he went. By faith Moses 
preferred the sorrowful uncertainties of 
the people of God to the obvious com- 
forts and safety of the Egyptian Court. 
By faith men chose to live the life of 
pilgrims and strangers because they 
sought a better country than they had 
known. Obeying this inner impulse they 
went through fire and flood and put to 
flight the armies of aliens. 

This is evidently not knowledge, but 
an ability to act in advance of knowledge. 
It is the willingness to take huge risks. 
The men who put to flight the army of 
aliens were men who did not flee before 
the aliens. It was not the foreseen victory 
but the invincible courage that was 
praised. Faith is an act of sublime audac- 
ity on the part of a being who matches 
himself against powers that threaten to 
20 



COURAGE 

overwhelm him. It is that which induces 
a man to try hazardous experiments in 
righteousness. 

But the great word may, and often 
does, fall into a weaker use. It comes 
to signify not the power which dares, 
but the smug assurance of one who in 
advance of the conflict has information 
of the result. The battle is only theatri- 
cal, the victory is predetermined, and 
all the means leading to it are clearly to 
be seen. Be not afraid, because there is 
nothing to be afraid of. 

Now that definite knowledge that 
there is nothing to be afraid of may be 
very comforting, but it is not courage. 
It is rather the elimination of all that 
makes courage necessary. If the soldier 
knew beforehand that no bullet could 
harm him, he would face the enemy 
21 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

with as much unconcern as at the car- 
nival he would face a shower of confetti. 
All that is characteristic in the soldier's 
sense of duty disappears. 

To vast numbers of people the word 
faith means advance knowledge, super- 
naturally communicated. To those who 
feel that they have attained it, fear dis- 
appears from its accustomed haunts. 
But it still prowls around in the out- 
skirts of consciousness, in the places 
that yet remain dark. It is apt to take a 
new form. What if the faith itself should 
waver? Or what if the faith one holds 
should prove not to be the true faith ? 

The identification of religious faith 
with advance knowledge has another 
consequence. It prevents multitudes 
of persons from entering joyously and 
confidently into the religious life. They 

22 



COURAGE 

are waiting for a miracle that does not 
happen. They long to believe, but 
they cannot. No mysterious light flashes 
upon the future. They are surrounded 
by uncertainties. Were God revealed to 
them by unmistakable signs, they would 
gladly worship him. Were indubitable 
truth to be made manifest, they would 
accept it. Were a voice to proclaim 
Duty unmistakably, they would in- 
stantly give themselves to its service. 
But nothing happens as they had been led 
to expect. And so they plod on, as best 
they may, upon the common way. 

To such it may be a help to lay aside 
for the time the great word which 
has a double meaning, and put the 
emphasis upon the word whose mean- 
ing is unmistakable — Courage. 

When we appeal to courage we are 
23 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

not dependent on any contingency of 
knowledge. We do not state an opinion. 
We do not prophesy the event. We do 
not flatter, we do not make promises, we 
do not argue. We only awaken a power 
— it is the power to endure and to dare. 
What that power shall accomplish, how 
far it shall go, we know not. It is 
enough for the moment that it responds 
to the call. Before the formal answer 
to the creed, "I believe," comes the 
instinctive answer to the need — "I 
dare." 

Religion and Morality are in their be- 
ginnings acts of pure courage. They are 
the bold assertion of a creature who is 
determined to become what he is well 
aware that he is not. We talk of "timid 
piety." But that is only an afterthought. 
It is the attitude of one who is afraid 
24 



COURAGE 

that he may lose a treasure which he 
once possessed. It is like the young man 
who went away very sorrowful because 
he had great possessions, which he was 
unwilling to put in jeopardy. But piety 
in the making is not timid but bold with 
the audacity of conscious poverty un- 
der the spur of necessity. It is not a 
treasure. It is a treasure-seeker, with 
nothing to lose and all to gain. 

Here we see the explanation of that 
which often seems paradoxical in reli- 
gious experience. " Blessed are the poor 
in spirit," they are the most high- 
spirited in the quest for perfection, and 
go furthest. The consciousness of their 
utter poverty sets them free from pru- 
dential considerations which hold others 
back. Those who are passing through a 
great spiritual crisis are apt to speak 
25 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

scornfully of what they call "mere mor- 
ality." 

The morality which they scorn is 
that which is conventional. It now 
seems of little worth, compared with 
what they would obtain. Theirs is the 
spirit of the leader of a forlorn hope, 
who flings away all that he has on a 
glorious venture. 

The prophet says of the righteous 
servant of Jehovah, "He was numbered 
among the transgressors." All that is 
inspiring in the history of mankind has 
to do with these glorious transgressors, 
who were willing to defy power that 
seemed irresistible. 

The arguments of tyrants have always 

been simple. "Remain where we have 

placed you, and we shall protect you. 

Under our watchful guardianship you 

26 



COURAGE 

shall be safe. Resist and you shall suf- 
fer, and as the last resort we may kill 
you." 

The slave submits, content with ig- 
noble safety. When the impulse of free- 
dom comes, there is defiance. " I will 
follow what seems to me the better 
course, come what may." 

The whole significance of the choice 
lies in the fact that the man who 
makes it does not know what may 
come. The issue of the strife is uncer- 
tain, but nevertheless he enters upon 
it gladly. When word came to Nehe- 
miah that his enemies were about to at- 
tack him and he was urged to flee into the 
temple, he answered: " Should such a 
man as I flee? And who is there that 
being as I am would go into the temple 
to save his life ? I will not go in." 
27 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

Here the outward fact was confronted 
with the inner fact. The outer reality 
was Danger, the inner was Courage. 
They confronted one another, and the 
inner reality stood firm. 

When such a conflict takes place, 
how shall the victory be determined? 
In this case Nehemiah stood his ground 
and his enemies did not destroy him. 
We say that he triumphed through his 
act of courage. But suppose they^had 
come upon him and killed him at his 
post of duty. Still the judgment of man- 
kind would crown him victor. Such a 
man as he was in his life, such he was 
in death. In his steadfastness he had 
gained the undefiled rewards. True to 
himself he had not yielded to a threat. 

Entering as we do into the heritage of 
generations of valiant souls, we do not 
28 



COURAGE 

realize that everything which we call 
a virtue was at one time a perilous ad- 
venture in righteousness, and that our 
commonest duties were once acts pro- 
hibited, which only the boldest spirits 
dared attempt. Our simplest faith be- 
longs to the way men called heresy. 

One may enter a modern church 
and see in it but an institution devoted 
to the defence of the established order. 
The faces of the worshipers indicate 
prosperity rather than eager aspiration. 
Then come the thrilling words of the 
Te Deum : 

"The glorious company of the Apos- 
tles praise thee. 

" The goodly fellowship of the proph- 
ets praise thee. 

" The noble army of martyrs praise 
thee." 

29 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

Amid the respectabilities and the 
orthodoxies and the moral mediocrities, 
to which the church-goers had been 
accustomed, there come the brave be- 
ginners, non-conformists all. They were 
men who would not be conformed to 
the world, even to the religious world 
of their time. They attempted to trans- 
form it, by the renewing of their 
minds. 

The Apostles were men who chose 
the hard task instead of the easy one. 
They left friends and comrades to carry 
a message to men who were not willing 
to receive it. The Prophets were men 
with an unusual zeal for righteousness. 
They were not satisfied with the stand- 
ards of their community. Lonely and 
friendless, they yet kept their chosen 
path unfalteringly. We hear from the 

3° 



COURAGE 

prophet the outcry of pain, but it is a 
pain that never swerves him from his 
course. " Woe is me for my hurt, for 
it is grievous. But I said, truly this is 
grief, and I must bear it." And the 
Martyrs, who were they? — Literally 
witnesses, men, with an unusual sense 
of veracity. No threat or torture could 
induce them to swerve in their testi- 
mony. They could die, but they could 
not deny the truth they saw. 

Truly a glorious company! a goodly 
fellowship! a noble army! 

We do not understand the language 
of religion if we interpret it by the spirit 
of those who merely acquiesce in dogmas 
which have been presented to them. We 
must go directly to the men who have 
dared — the prophets, apostles and mar- 
3i 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

tyrs of every age. Let us try to under- 
stand their attitude. 

Let us define the great words of reli- 
gion in terms of pure courage. 

Repentance. This is a declaration of 
independence, an act of defiance. A 
man looks upon his past acts and on his 
present condition and sees them to be 
full of sin and shame. He loathes them, 
but he at first sees no way of escape from 
them. Habit holds him. Reason seems to 
say that it is inevitable that he should re- 
main as he is. He has made his bed, he 
must lie upon it. He cannot escape from 
the consequences of his own deeds. 
They are his destiny. 

Then comes a sudden access of cour- 
age. He no longer seeks to escape. The 
consequences ? of his deeds remain and 
must meet him again. So be it. But 
32 



COURAGE 

when they meet him again they shall 
not find in him a cowering slave. He 
will confront them like a man. It is not 
the circumstances that have changed, 
but he has changed. He will live, not as 
if the things he had done had never 
happened. They have happened. Now 
they are a part of the evil that is to be 
overcome. He no longer apologizes, 
or excuses. He has given up his old self 
and is deliberately building up a new 
character. 

Can he do it? The wise and prudent 
say, No. He is battling against fate. He 
is defying the laws of nature, of his own 
nature. Even the prophet of righteous- 
ness is, at times, skeptical as to the re- 
sult. "Can the Ethiopian change his 
skin, or the leopard his spots ? Then may 
ye also do good that are accustomed to 
33 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

do evil." Against the influence of hered- 
ity and habit who can contend ? 
i But the contest goes on. It is the 
thrilling story of brave souls that have 
grappled with the evil in their own na- 
tures, and begun life anew. 

Forgiveness. This is rebellion against 
the tyranny of our own prejudices. We 
had sat in judgment upon others. We 
had identified the sinner with his sin. 
Our idea of rectitude had hardened into 
fixed forms. Certain persons had become 
to us symbols of unrighteousness. To 
hate them was the outward and visible 
sign of our inner grace. The moral law 
had itself become fatalistic. Its very ex- 
istence seemed to depend upon the in- 
variable relation between sin and its 
penalties. To pardon was to be disloyal 
to its stern requirements. 
34 



COURAGE 

Then comes the revolutionary idea of 
forgiveness. To a person of ethical 
temper and training it demands the 
highest kind of courage. " Who art thou 
that forgivest sins ? " 

Shelley makes the Furies looking 
down on the ineffective efforts of well- 
meaning people cry tauntingly, — 

They dare not devise good for man's estate 
And yet they know that they do not dare. 

What they do not dare do is fully to 
trust their fellow-men. The memory of 
old sins prevents confidence in new 
endeavors. 

But now and then there comes one 
who has the courage of forgiveness. His 
conception of the moral law is purged 
of fatalism. It is the perfect law of 
liberty. It means the call to every one 

35 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

to do the very best he can, under the 
circumstances in which he finds himself. 
All men are equal under this law. He 
is careless of conventional distinctions 
between saints and sinners. The past is 
seen to be past, and he sees his fellow- 
men, acting under the stress of present 
necessities. His judgments are not re- 
trospective, but have to do with living 
issues. To him repentant sinners come, 
sure that he will see them not as they 
were but as they are. He judges not 
after appearance but judges righteous 
judgments. The appearances are the 
survivals of the past; but he is quick to 
discern the latent good that doth not yet 
appear. 

He only has achieved freedom who 
dares to challenge the conventional 
judgments. He dares conceive of new 

36 



COURAGE 

forms of righteousness, a righteousness 
that "exceeds the righteousness of 
scribes and pharisees." He is a bold 
explorer who discovers virtues in un- 
expected places. His conscience moves 
as freely among the acts and motives 
of men, as the imagination of the artist 
moves among the elements of beauty. 
And like the imagination of the artist 
it is selective and creative. Out of im- 
perfect human nature it selects what is 
most precious and creates new forms 
of spiritual excellence. 

Renunciation. All philosophies and 
religions have emphasized renunciation. 
But it makes a great difference whether 
the word is interpreted as an act of 
spiritual courage or as a yielding to im- 
perious necessity. It is to be feared 
that when we speak of self-denial or 
37 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

self-sacrifice the fatalistic feeling is sug- 
gested to most minds. In this world, it 
is thought, the best is beyond our reach, 
we must learn to give up the vain de- 
sire for it and to content ourselves with 
the second best. But this is to beg the 
whole question. The assertion of those 
who live the life of the spirit is that the 
life they have chosen is in reality the 
higher life. It is the kind of life that in 
itself yields the most lasting satisfactions. 
The choice is a real one only when this is 
believed. When St. Francis talked with 
Brother Leo about perfect bliss, he was 
not counseling resignation, he was 
arousing spiritual ambition. To him the 
life of lowly service was enticing. He 
would have his disciple feel its charm. 
There have always been persons who 
really believed in the Beatitudes. They 

38 



COURAGE 

have preferred to be blessed rather than 
to be comfortable. Even the most big- 
oted man of the world must admit that 
there are persons who do not share his 
aims. These headstrong people must be 
allowed to go on their own way. If they 
give up what to him is of most value, he 
should do them the credit to believe 
that it is in exchange for something they 
care for more. When they voluntarily 
lose the whole world, it is because they 
put an extraordinary value upon their 
own souls. 

It is not the fact of giving up some- 
thing that is important. The important 
thing is the reason. There are strategi- 
cal moves to be considered. 

The commander of a fortress may 
evacuate it in the face of the enemy. 
He is no longer able to maintain himself 

39 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

in it, and he'retires before overwhelm- 
ing force. He gives up somethingunder 
compulsion. But on the other hand he 
may march out of the fortress, in order 
to meet the enemy. He leaves the se- 
curity of the walls in order to force an 
engagement. This movement is not 
compelled by fear, but impelled \ by 
courage. He leaves the strong position, 
because he trusts in the strength of 
his own army. 

In war two generals of equal intellect- 
ual ability and equally versed in military 
science may confront each other. In 
only one respect do they differ, in the 
amount and quality of their courage. 
This temperamental difference is deci- 
sive. It influences their strategy and 
determines their action at every point. 
All the intellectual processes are influ- 
40 



COURAGE 

enced by the ultimate object. One 
commander uses all his skill to save 
himselfjand his army. He is full of ex- 
pedients by which to extricate himself 
from places of difficulty and danger. To 
the other, himself and his army are only 
instruments to be used^for a purpose. He 
is not thinking about them but about 
what he can do with them. He is ever 
seeking the decisive moment when 
everything is to be risked in one mighty 
effort. 

The same difference exists among 
men of religion. One man conceives of 
religion as the higher prudence. All its 
problems are prudential. How may I 
with the least waste of time in individ- 
ual thinking, and the least spiritual anx- 
iety, attain to a comfortable certainty? 
How may I escape from the conse- 

4* 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

quences of my own mistakes and sins ? 
How may I extricate myself from com- 
plex social relationships which disturb 
my peace of mind? How shall I enjoy 
the rewards of righteousness without be- 
ing burdened by its anxieties ? How can 
I be assured that my good deeds shall 
be rewarded and my prayers answered 
according to my notion of what is fit- 
ting? 

It will be noticed that all these are of 
the nature of demands upon a power 
outside of us, but that there is no demand 
upon a power working in us and through 
us. They are the problems of religion 
that might be formulated by sluggards 
and cowards. 

Do not expect when you turn to 
the glorious company of Apostles, the 
goodly fellowship of Prophets, and the 
42 



COURAGE 

noble army of Martyrs, to find the solu- 
tion of such problems. The problems are 
not even propounded. "The beggar self 
forgets to ask." 

Sorrow, misunderstanding, uncer- 
tainty, death, these are not explained 
away. They are unescapable realities in 
the world we live in. But they are not 
the supreme realities. They are not our 
masters and shall not be allowed to keep 
us from our chosen way. We will not 
yield to our inferiors. The spiritual na- 
ture of man asserts itself. And in that 
self-assertion is freedom. 

Worship. The nature of worship is 
obscured by our familiarity with its 
forms. In its essence it is an act of 
spiritual daring. It is an attitude of the 
soul 1 toward that which is perfect, but 
it differs from the attitude of artistic 
43 



\ 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

appreciation, or even of moral approba- 
tion. It is the recognition of a perfec- 
tion that is so far above that it seems to 
belong to another world. But into that 
other world the worshiper ventures. 

Isaiah gives us a picture of worship 
in his vision which came "in the year 
that King Uzziah died." He saw "the 
Lord sitting upon a throne high and 
lifted up, and his train filled the heaven." 
He heard the voices that cried one to 
another, " Holy, holy, a holy is the Lord 
of hosts, the] whole earthy is full of his 
glory." At first the vision of a per- 
fection he could not attain to over- 
whelmed him and he cried, "Woe is 
me ! for I am undone, because I am a 
man of unclean lips and I dwell in the 
midst of a people of unclean lips." Then 
a coal from the altar touched his lips, 

44 



COURAGE 

and there came the sudden access of 
spiritual courage. He forgot the dis- 
tance between himself and the splendor 
that enthralled him. The call to high 
service was accepted before he had time 
to assure himself of his fitness. "Here 
am I, send me." 

Worship comes before knowledge 
and before fitness. They do not know 
the working of the human soul who 
think of adoration as the posture only 
of saints. The beatific vision comes to 
multitudes yet in their sins. They rev- 
erence that which they do not compre- 
hend. And that life is meager indeed 
which does not recognize, at least in 
moments, the glory touching the far 
horizons. By-and-by it may become the 
light of common day. Now it is some- 
thing to be wondered at. 
45 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

To one who has felt himself to be a 
prisoner of Fate the liberating moment 
comes, when he turns from the uncertain- 
ties of the outward world to something 
which he'discovers within himself. He 
feels a spiritual impulse and dares to 
trust it In that new-born confidence 
there is disenthrallment. He has seen a 
great light; he resolves to follow it 
Whither it will lead him he, as yet, 
knows not He will take the risks. In 
that choice is his first experience of 
freedom. 



II 

SKILL 

We have considered the significance 
of courage in the human struggle for free- 
dom. The emergence of the hero marks 
the first victory over a gloomy fatalism. 
The hero declares no doctrine about 
the Universe, but he asserts himself. 
What I am, I am. What may happen 
to him is a matter which for the mo- 
ment may be treated as irrelevant. Let 
worst come to worst, he will be loyal 
to his own vision of the best. 

The charm of all hero stories is that 
we are not concerned as to how they 
come out. Character is seen to be in- 
trinsically more important than circum- 
stance. Even^the tragedy " comes out 
47 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

well," if the heroic spirit is manifest 
unto the end. Samson lies buried under 
the ruins of the temple he has thrown 
down. But " Samson hath quit himself 
like Samson." That is enough. 
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble. 

The characteristic thing about cour- 
age is that it is complete in itself, and 
is dependent on no circumstance what- 
ever. The battlefield is in the man's 
own nature. When he has overcome 
fear, the victory is won. He has gained 
the undefiled rewards. 
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite, 
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night, 

To defy Power which seems omnipotent 

To love and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates, 

4 8 



SKILL 

This like thy glory Titan is to be 

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free ; 

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory. 

Not only does the courageous spirit 
determine its own course without re- 
gard to the threats of opposing power, 
but it chooses its own course of conduct 
without waiting for sympathy. Matthew 
Arnold, in a little poem called " Reli- 
gious Isolation," compares those who 
do not trust their spiritual intuitions 
until they have been confirmed by ar- 
guments drawn from Nature to children 
who are " too fearful or too fond to play 
alone." We must learn to walk without 
external supports. 

What though the holy secret, which moulds 

thee, 
Moulds not the solid earth ? though never winds 
Have whisper'd it to the complaining sea, 

49 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

Nature's great law, and law of all men's minds? 
To its own impulse every creature stirs ; 
Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers ! 

This sense of isolation is necessary to 
one who would know the nature of 
goodness. The biologist in the labora- 
tory isolates the fgerra which he would 
study. He must see it as it is, without 
confusing it with anything else. Only 
thus can he determine whether its be- 
havior is harmful or beneficent. So the 
things of the spirit must be distin- 
guished from their material environ- 
ment. They must be " spiritually dis- 
cerned." As parts of the interior life 
they must be differentiated from every 
influence external to themselves. 

My mind to me a kingdom is. 

This kingdom must preserve its inde- 
5o 



SKILL 

pendence. Its borders must be jeal- 
ously defended against all invasion. 

When we use the term disinterested 
virtue, we simply mean that we are 
talking about virtue, and not about 
something else which may easily be 
mistaken for it. We are fixing our 
minds upon a motive for conduct. The 
virtuous motive is something very dif- 
ferent from the hope of reward or the 
fear of punishment. We are anxious to 
make clear what that motive precisely 
is. This is done when the choice brings 
pain rather than pleasure. This choice 
demands pure courage. 

But though Courage is the first great 
liberator from fatalistic slavery, it is not 
the only one. When the choice of ideal 
good has been bravely made, another 
step must be taken. The emancipated 

5* 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

soul is not content simply to fight its 
old battles over again. It would use its 
independence in seeking larger fields 
of service. It is not enough to be good, 
it would do good. After the realization 
of moral freedom comes the desire for 
efficiency. 

Let us consider the next phase of the 
struggle against Fatalism. It involves a 
new outlook upon the world, and a new 
method, Courage, wins the sense of per- 
sonal independence. The soul is freed 
from the inhibitions of fear. It dares to 
obey its own higher impulses. It no 
longer consents to be molded by its 
environment. But a new liberator ap- 
pears — it is Skill. Skill accomplishes 
what Courage only proposes. It creates 
a new environment. It is the mind 

5 2 



SKILL 

working upon the materials provided 
for it in the actual world. As men learn 
to work skillfully, they come to have 
an altogether different mental attitude. 
They literally "work out their own sal- 
vation " from many evils which before 
had seemed irremediable. 

Dean Stanley in a vivid chapter in his 
book on Christian Institutions tells of the 
origin of the Litany. It came at the time 
when the Roman Empire was tottering 
to its fall. In France there had been terri- 
fic social convulsions and with them a 
succession of droughts, pestilences, and 
earthquakes. Horror was piled on hor- 
ror. "On one of these occasions, when 
the people had been hoping that with 
the Easter festival some respite would 
come, a sudden earthquake shook the 

53 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

Church at Vienne on the Rhone. It was 
on Easter eve; the congregation rushed 
out; the bishop of the city was left 
alone before the altar. On that terrible 
night he formed the resolution of invent- 
ing a new form, as he hoped, of draw- 
ing down the mercy of God." Out 
of the conscious helplessness before 
the awful powers of Nature, came 
the Litany, with its prayers for help 
against "the lightning and tempest," 
the "plague, pestilence and famine," 
the "battle and murder and sudden 
death." 

Famine, pestilence, lightning and 
tempest, battle and murder and sudden 
death still exist. Indeed, the catalogue 
of human ills has been lengthened 
owing to increasing sensitiveness and 
quickened sympathy. But the attitude 
54 



SKILL 

of the modern man is different from that 
of the excited multitudes of mediaeval 
peasants who followed each other over 
hill and valley, crying, "Lord, have 
mercy upon us." 

Instead of the penitential processions 
you find men armed with instruments 
of precision studying the evils that are 
presented as so many problems to be 
solved. 

We enter the laboratory and watch 
the careful processes by which the pes- 
tilence is robbed of its terrors. It is no 
longer the " pestilence that walketh in 
darkness." A searching light has been 
thrown upon it. The death-dealer is re- 
vealed as itself a form of life. It is a 
specific germ whose life-history can be 
determined, and habits known. The cool 
students learn how it is produced, how 

55 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

it thrives, on what food it is dependent, 
and how it reproduces itself. Its life- 
history once known, plans are made for 
its control or its destruction. All this 
is unemotional. There is no guess- 
work about it. Each process is carefully 
tested. Vague fears are not allowed to 
disturb the impartial poise of the inves- 
tigator. 

Famine is no longer personified. It is 
not a meager ghost that clutches its vic- 
tims. It is an economic blunder, that in- 
dicates a low stage of civilization. It is 
an indication of unjustifiable waste. Go 
to any of our great universities, and you 
will see why it is that life has been di- 
vested of one of its terrors. The human 
intellect is not merely considering its 
own needs, but it is providing also for 
the needs of the body. Chemists, biolo- 

56 



SKILL 

gists, physiologists, engineers, political 
economists, are collaborating in one 
great utilitarian work. They are con- 
cerned with the food-supply. They are 
carefully working out the problems of 
its production and distribution. This 
knowledge once obtained, great armies 
of teachers are engaged to make it avail- 
able to the people. 

The earthquake and tempest have not 
been eliminated. But even in the pres- 
ence of their terrible destruction, we 
are aware that the attitude of the modern 
man is different from that of his prede- 
cessors. In San Francisco the earth- 
quake was looked upon as an incident 
that must be taken into account by fu- 
ture city-builders. It revealed weak 
points in civic engineering. Architects 
must study how to make their buildings 

57 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

secure against such tremors of the earth 
as may come at long intervals. 

In regard to war, a calamity of our 
own making, the attitude of our age is, 
curiously enough, more fatalistic than 
in regard to the destructive outbursts of 
Nature's forces. But even here intellec- 
tual curiosity is making itself felt. In 
the Peace Congresses there is apt to be 
less appeal to vague humanitarian sen- 
timent, and more use of cool reason. 
Let us investigate the real causes of 
war. Let us isolate the bacillus of mili- 
tarism, and see if it is really immortal 
as so many worldly-wise people imagine. 
Cool, businesslike discussions are going 
on as to ways and means for lessening 
the enormous waste of life and treasure 
that has hitherto been supposed to be 
unavoidable. This indicates that the 

58 



SKILL 

peacemaker is learning to go about his 
work in a matter-of-fact way. He is 
considering not only the value of his 
product, but the most economical way of 
producing it. He is looking for results. 

What then becomes of the Litany 
with its " Good Lord, deliver us " ? 
When science and skill are enlisted in 
the work of deliverance from earthly 
evils, does religion cease to be a neces- 
sity? As men become self-reliant, do 
the old pieties, which once were so 
beautiful, vanish ? 

There are those who thus interpret 
the intellectual development of hu- 
manity. To them,-every increase in skill 
is a step away from religion, and from 
the old courageous faith of prophets and 
saints. It is even a step away from confi- 
dence in the moral law. Is not that also 
59 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

an object of intellectual curiosity, rather 
than of devout feeling? 

In such an interpretation it seems to 
me that they mistake the whole signifi- 
cance of skill. Skill does not have to do 
with the ends but with the means. The 
difference between the skilled and the 
unskilled laborer lies not in the thing 
they are trying to do, but in their relative 
ability to do it. A certain difficult piece 
of work is proposed to them both. They 
are equally well-meaning and clear in 
their understanding of the object of 
their endeavor. But one man comes to 
the difficulty and is stopped by it. It is 
an absolute veto to his endeavor. He 
can go no further. The other man 
comes to the same difficulty, and his 
intelligence and training enable him 
quickly to overcome it. It is to him 
60 



SKILL 

only an incident in his day's work. Skill 
is not a substitute for an ideal ; it is only 
the way by which an ideal may be 
realized. 

What the increase of skill really does 
is to widen the sphere of moral free- 
dom, so that it takes in not merely 
thought and feeling, but also effective 
action. It makes it possible for the good 
cause to succeed. 

The disappointment which comes in 
reading the history of many heroic souls 
is not because they did not receive 
material rewards, — these they did not 
seek, but because they did not accom- 
plish the thing nearest their hearts. 
There is a baffled feeling as of one 
vainly fighting against remorseless Fate, 
when the most earnest effort fails to 
bring the result which is sought. 
61 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

The law-giver wills justice. He lives 
to see the instruments of justice per- 
verted to the uses of civil tyranny. The 
prophet calls people to the worship of 
Divine righteousness, and then, look- 
ing upon the externalization of religion 
cries, "Israel hath forgotten God and 
buildeth ^temples." The philanthropist 
wills mercy, and finds the institutions 
of charity becoming hateful because of 
the cold-heartedness of those who ad- 
minister their resources. The revolu- 
tionist fares no better. He wills liberty, 
but how to realize it in the period of 
revolution he knows not. The great 
words he utters return to him in 
mocking echoes. 

The nations thronged around, and cried aloud 
As with one voice, Truth, liberty and love ! 
Suddenly confusion fell from heaven 

62 



SKILL 

Among them ; there was strife, deceit and fear ; 
Tyrants rushed in and did divide the spoil. 
This was the shadow of the truth I saw. 

The ancient explanation of such sor- 
rowful disappointments was altogether 
fatalistic. The Hebrew sage saw this 
as the vanity under the sun. " All things 
come alike to all, there is one event to 
the righteous and the wicked, to the 
good and to the clean and to the un- 
clean,"to him that sacrificeth and to him 
that sacrificeth not, as to the good so to 
the sinner." So far as he himself was 
concerned, he would make the brave 
decision. He would "fear God and keep 
his commandments, this is the whole 
duty of man." But it was a duty done 
without hope of its accomplishing any- 
thing. 

The Stoics' realm of moral freedom was 

63 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

equally limited. They divided all things 
into two great categories, — the things 
which are within our power, and those 
which lie outside. In regard to the first 
category we must be solicitous. Like 
good soldiers we must guard all that is 
left in our custody. But toward the 
rest we must cultivate an austere in- 
difference. They are to be treated 
as the soldier treats the cold and 
the heat. They are incidents to be dis- 
regarded. The greater part of actual 
existence fell within the second cate- 
gory. 

And Christian ethics made the same 
distinction. "Let every man bear his 
own burden," is one text. "Cast thy 
burden on the Lord," is another. They 
are not really contradictory because 
they refer to two different kinds of bur- 

64 



SKILL 

dens — those which we can bear and 
those whose nature is such that we can- 
not bear them. There are some things 
for which we are responsible, for they 
are within our power. These things we 
must assume — they belong to us. There 
are other things which do not come by 
our will, and cannot be changed by our 
effort; these things need not trouble us. 
It is enough for us to leave them in 
God's hands. 

The distinction is founded on good 
sense, and must always remain. But 
there has been a constant change in the 
number of things included in the two di- 
visions. With the growth of knowledge 
and with the increase in skill, one 
event after another has been taken out 
of the category of the morally indiffer- 
ent and placed within the realm of 

65 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

human responsibility. In other words^ 
the world is being gradually moralized. 
What was once attributed to time and 
chance, is now seen to be within the 
control of the enlightened will. 

Take that lamentation of Ecclesiastes : 
" I returned and saw under the sun that 
the race is not to the swift, nor the bat- 
tle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, 
nor yet riches to men of understanding, 
nor yet favor to men of skill, but time 
and chance happen to them all." 

That was the observation of a man 
who saw things as they were in his own 
land and time. It is such an observation 
as a philosopher in Mexico or Turkey 
or Persia might make at the present 
time. Personal merit has nothing to do 
with success in life. The wisest and 
best are the victims. Selfish and cruel 
66 



SKILL 

men have the advantage in the struggle 
for existence. It is an observation which 
is measurably true in every community. 
But the ancient observer makes of it a 
wide generalization as^if he were stating 
an unescapable law of nature. And the 
pessimist accepts the generalization at 
its face value. It is not worth while for 
a man to try to be wise or good or even 
energetic in a world like this. He can- 
not expect in that way to get on. His vir- 
tues and his talents only handicap him. 
But read the lamentation to a modern 
social reformer and note his response. 
In the first place he inquires narrowly 
into the facts. To what extent, he asks, 
is it true that the best individuals in any 
particular community are crowded out, 
and the unfit survive and increase ? In 
so far as it exists/ this is an evil, but it 
6 7 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

is not to be vaguely and hopelessly at- 
tributed to an unfriendly universe, but 
to certain definite imperfections in the 
social order. And it is our business to 
find out what these are and to find the 
remedy. 

The gardener sees this evil under the 
sun, that sturdy weeds grow apace, and 
take the sustenance from the more del- 
icate but more useful plants. But he 
does not fold his hands in fatalistic 
resignation. Here is a challenge to his 
skill. He studies the soil and the growth 
of the plants both evil and good. He so 
orders his garden that those he loves 
best shall thrive best. And in so doing 
he learns that he is not working against 
Nature but with her. He is doing quickly 
what she is doing slowly and on a vaster 
scale. 

68 



SKILL 

In our day people are beginning to 
see that the old fatalistic notions which 
surrounded the conception of law and 
government are superstitious. A gov- 
ernment does not exist for itself, still 
less do the people exist for it. It is as 
much an invention as a locomotive or 
sewing machine. It was constructed by 
human skill and it can be reconstructed 
by increased skill. When it does not do 
the work for which it was designed, the 
machine must be repaired, or perhaps 
new parts added. 

If we have a state of affairs in which 
individual talents are repressed and am- 
bition smothered, in which industry 
does not get its proper rewards, and 
the wise and just are at a disadvantage, 
then our social organization is at fault. It 
is time for us to see what is the matter. 

6 9 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

We must call in the expert and follow 
his advice. 

The very multiplicity of the devices 
for doing good, and the technical skill 
that is enlisted in the work, obscure to 
many minds the spiritual significance of 
it all. It is as if the Good Samaritan, 
with his big heart and his scanty equip- 
ment for service, were suddenly to be 
transported into a modern hospital. Of 
the uses of the instruments, of the ne- 
cessity of the routine, or of the meaning 
of the terms freely used by unemotional 
internes and " visiting men," he would 
know nothing. He would not at first 
realize that the complex machinery had 
no other object than the fulfillment of 
his heart's desire. These were the mod* 
ern improvements on his simple win? 
and oil. 

70 



SKILL 

Those who complain that in our day 
people are turning away from the ideal 
to the practical, should, before they 
allow themselves to become too much 
discouraged, define their terms; use the 
words as adjectives and ask, Ideal what? 
Practical what? 

The answer is ideal ends, and practi- 
cal methods. The great fact is, not that 
people are turning away from ideal ends, 
but that they are, as never before, pro- 
foundly interested in practical methods 
for attaining these ends. Doing justly 
and mercifully, walking humbly before 
God, are recognized as skilled occupa- 
tions. 

To the educated men and women of 
this generation, it is particularly neces- 
sary to have a clear understanding of 
this relation between ideal purposes 
7i 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

and practical methods. We can say of 
Beauty that it is its own excuse for be- 
ing. But we cannot say the same thing 
of Skill. Its justification lies in its rela- 
tion to its object. Skill applied to un- 
worthy purposes only makes disaster 
greater and more certain. Efficiency be- 
comes a mere fetish to those who do 
not ask carefully what is the purpose of 
the work which is efficiently done. 

Thomas a Kempis prayed, "Grant 
me, O Lord, to know what is worth 
knowing and to love what is worth lov- 
ing." Only out of such desire can come 
worthy action. The thing that is worth 
knowing and worth loving is also worth 
doing. The next question is, how to do 
it. This is a matter of skill. 

It might be possible to make two 
7* 



SKILL , 
charts of human progress through the 
ages. One would indicate fervor of the 
spirit, the devotion to pure ideals, as 
manifest in feeling and word. The other 
would record the growth in efficiency, 
the extent to which moral endeavor ac- 
tually modified the course of events. 

The first, I imagine, would look very 
much like a clinical chart. There would 
be sudden risings and falls in tempera- 
ture. In one generation there would be 
a great access of spiritual courage, a re- 
vival of pure religion. Then would be 
recorded the periods of coldness and 
torpor. These periods would not coin- 
cide with advance in other directions. 
It is in the darkest ages that the great- 
est heroes and saints have lived. 

But the other would be like a map 
showing the course of some great river. 

73 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

It begins in a tiny rivulet, and it in- 
creases not through any mysterious 
power of growth in itself, but by what 
it receives from its affluents. A thou- 
sand streams flow into it and add their 
waters to its current. 

The increase of skill is cumulative. 
The results of the experience of one 
generation are handed down to the next. 
This increment is not dependent on 
states of feeling. Our desire for right- 
eousness may be no greater than that of 
our barbarous progenitors, but our abil- 
ity to perform is undoubtedly greater. 

From this point of view the old dis- 
cussion about Justification by Faith 
takes on a new aspect. The question 
was as to which was the important 
thing, the outer act or the inner impulse. 
Luther took the side of inner liberty. 
74 



SKILL 

"The good work does not make the 
good man," he said, "the good man 
does the good work." 

The modern reformer would say: 
We must first determine accurately 
what we mean by a good man and what 
we mean by a good work. Each must 
be judged according to its own nature. 
A man's goodness must be judged by 
his motive, and a work must be judged 
by its results. When such tests are ap- 
plied, it appears that many so-called 
"good works" are not good at all. 
They are either futile or pernicious. 
No amount of such works can make a 
man better. On the other hand, whether 
a good man does good works depends 
upon whether he has learned how to 
do them. He will certainly desire to do 
good, but whether he succeeds is an- 

75 



\ THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

other matter. His intentions may be 
right and his actions may bring calami- 
ties. The blunders of the good are some- 
times as disastrous as the crimes of the 
wicked. 

A clear comprehension of the effect 
which advancing knowledge and in- 
creasing skill have on moral judgments 
would save us from many fruitless 
discussions. It would enable us to see 
the real point of agreement between 
the ethical idealist and the well-in- 
tentioned "practical" man who often 
misunderstands and resists him. 

In every generation there is a con- 
troversy going on between the radical 
reformers and the conservatives. Each 
accuses the other of moral obliquity. 
The reformer fixes his mind upon a 

7 6 



SKILL 

specific evil which has become a part of 
the social system. He declares it to be 
cruel and unjust. He pictures the suf- 
fering that is entailed to the innocent. 
Let us do away with this, he says, at 
any cost. And so by every method of 
agitation he seeks to arouse the social 
conscience, and unite all good people 
in behalf of his cause. 

Great is his disappointment and in- 
dignation when he finds that his appeal 
falls on indifferent or even hostile ears. 
His measures for the alleviation of hu- 
man misery meet not only with the op- 
position of selfish interests but with 
the disapproval of those whose personal 
characters are above suspicion. Their 
attitude is disconcerting because they 
refuse to face fairly the specific ques- 
tion which he raises. They are in real- 

77 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

ity fatalists so far as this matter is con- 
cerned. "Yes/' they say, "we admit 
that many things may be going on 
which are unpleasant to contemplate. 
Not only is such investigation as you 
undertake unpleasant but it is also un- 
profitable. There are doubtless evils 
here, but they are evils incidental to 
the great and good work in which 
society is engaged. On the whole we 
are doing very well, and the good work 
should not be disturbed. We cannot 
expect perfection in a world like this. 
We must all learn to endure hardness 
and become good soldiers. When we 
are sure that a great constructive proc- 
ess is going on, we must patiently go 
on with it. We must not allow our- 
selves to be disturbed by destructive 
criticism. We would not, of course, do 

7 8 



SKILL 

evil that good may come. But when 
we see a solid good, we must endure 
the evils which accompany it, and which 
we see to be inevitable." 

This is the answer which in the first 
half of the last century was given to the 
reformers who, in England, investigated 
the work of women in the mines. " Yes, 
it is doubtless very distressing that 
women and girls are employed as beasts 
of burden, that they work in under- 
ground passages, often on their hands 
and knees, drawing loads of coal. It is 
a pity that they have such long hours, 
and that their scanty wages will not al- 
low of nourishing food. It is a pity too 
that these women should by the very na- 
ture of their calling, be prevented from 
living a respectable life. But this is one 
of the sacrifices demanded by civiliza- 
79 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

tion. It is necessary that we should have 
cheap fuel, and this is the only way that 
we can have it." 

It is the answer which the educational 
reformer has always received. "Yes; 
the sensitive child has a hard time of it. 
He is bullied by his masters and by his 
companions. His health sometimes suf- 
fers from long hours and bad air. He is 
driven, instead of gently led, in the paths 
of learning. Tasks are given him un- 
suited to his years. At the time he hates 
the school and all its ways, but after a 
while he will see that all has been for 
the best. He will forget the injustices of 
which he has been the victim. It is all 
involved in the necessarily painful proc- 
ess of education. Of course some can- 
not stand it. Every system has its fail- 
ures. But the survivors agree to praise 
80 



SKILL 

the discipline they have undergone. It 
is that which has made them what they 
are. Certainly that is a sufficient justifi- 
cation for it in their eyes." 

Suppose we were to interview a hun- 
dred " successful" men as to the means 
by which they got their living. We 
should find a substantial agreement 
among them. They would say, " We do 
not claim that the means by which we 
have succeeded have been ideally per- 
fect, and the conditions have not been 
those we should have chosen. But we 
are practical men and must take the 
world as we find it and do the best we 
can. Now and then there have been 
things that involved hardship to our 
competitors. We had to shut our eyes 
to these things and go on. If we have 
been less generous and kindly in our 
81 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

dealings than we should have desired, it 
is because it was necessary. We must 
get our living, you know." 

This is that form of fatalism which 
is called "economic determinism." It 
is that which makes every man an apol- 
ogist for that by which he lives. But it 
is not limited by purely economic neces- 
sity. Man does not live by bread alone. 
In the pursuit of the ideals of the higher 
life he also feels the pressure of harsh 
necessities. 

The history of human progress is full 
of cruelty. Religious^persecution was 
justified and practiced by many who 
were kind-hearted. Persecution was 
looked upon as a practical necessity, if 
the business of religious propagandism 
was to be carried on upon a large scale. 
Moral suasion was doubtless the ideal 
82 



SKILL 

thing, but it was very slow and uncertain 
in its working. To get results one must 
sometimes harden one's heart and use 
physical force. 

We have believers in modern civili- 
zation who are equally ruthless in their 
methods of advancing it. Backward 
peoples must, they say, be exterminated 
in order that the better stock may have 
a chance to increase. The incidental 
pain must be endured for the sake of 
the greater good. In all this we are im- 
itating the methods of nature. We are 
deliberately acting as instruments of 
Manifest Destiny. In all such discus- 
sions we have the contrast between the 
idealist appealing to sentiment, and the 
practical man insisting on the consider- 
ation of the necessities of the case. And 
so long as the discussion takes this form, 

83 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

the practical man has the advantage. 
He is standing firmly for facts as he sees 
them, and is working as best he can for 
the modest possibilities within his reach. 
I am not sure but that morally he has 
the advantage. He is loyal to certain 
great achievements of the race. They 
form a body of tested good. He is not 
willing to give them up for what may 
be only a dream of perfection. The 
worst government is better than no 
government at all. The most cruel in- 
dustrial system does keep the majority 
of people from starving. The pedant 
with his rod teaches the boy something 
which he could not have learned by him- 
self. Only a liberal bigot will deny that 
there have been times when religious 
bigotry was useful. 

But when the idealistic reformer has 

8 4 



SKILL 

added to his spiritual courage the nec- 
essary skill, the tables are turned. He 
ceases to be a mere agitator and begins 
to speak as an expert. All that the hon- 
est conservative claims he frankly ad- 
mits. All that the conservative loves, 
he loves also, and values highly. There 
is to be no wanton destruction, no waste 
of good material. In regard to ultimate 
ends there is also a good understanding. 
The wisdom of the past is not to be 
ignored. 

I agree, says the expert, that we must 
be severely practical. We must not 
waste our time over barren idealities. 
Our admiration is for the " men who do 
things." Let us make a list of the things 
you want to do, and then consider the 
best possible means of doing them. 
When such a list is made, it appears, 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

my dear sir, that there is a great deal 
of waste in the methods you have em- 
ployed. With the best intentions in the 
world, you have not been "getting re- 
sults." You have been using obsolete 
machinery, and employing unskilled 
workmen. Let us see how all this may 
be changed to your advantage. A great 
many things can be done which you de- 
clare to be impossible. But of course 
you need to learn how! 

The increase of skill means an in- 
crease of responsibility. That which 
makes life in these days so difficult 
is that so many things which once 
were deemed impossible are attempted. 
There has come the sudden realiza- 
tion that we can do more than in our 
ignorance we thought we could. The 
86 



SKILL 

conscience finds its jurisdiction en- 
larged, and is overwhelmed with new 
business. The old commandments be- 
come more formidable. We have heard 
it said by them of old time, " Thou shalt 
not kill." But we did not dream of our 
own destructive powers. We should 
not poison our neighbor's well. We are 
just beginning to realize that unwit- 
tingly we had been poisoning the air 
he breathed. To avoid this crime we 
have to rebuild our cities. More and 
more the death-list is scrutinized and 
accidents once described as "acts of 
God" are seen to be the acts of men. 
The list of avoidable disasters and pre- 
ventable diseases grows rapidly. The 
lives lost upon our railroads, in factories, 
in mines, in unsanitary homes, are lives 
for which somebody must be held re- 

87 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

sponsible. Such losses are not inevit- 
able. 

"Thou shalt not steal" was'a com- 
mandment which once brought little 
compunction to respectable members 
of society. But that was in pre-scientific 
days. To-day only the very stupid can 
feel free from any sense of guilt. We 
not only see the disinherited but we ask, 
how they came to be disinherited. Who 
took away the opportunities that should 
have been theirs? Who robbed them 
of their inheritance ? That an individual 
should not make good use of his oppor- 
tunities is something which society can- 
not prevent. But it certainly can prevent 
his being deprived of reasonable op- 
portunities to live a healthy and useful 
life. 

But though the advance of knowledge 
88 



SKILL 

increases our sense of responsibility it 
brings with it an exhilarating sense of 
freedom. Necessary evils there must al- 
ways be, and we must summon strength 
to bear them. But the conviction grows 
that a vast amount of evil which has 
been patiently borne is in reality un- 
necessary. The field of effective moral 
action has broadened, and the chances 
of success have increased. Because cer- 
tain evils have always existed is no rea- 
son why they should continue. It only 
means that greater skill and more per- 
sistent work are called for. It is a diffi- 
cult but not an impossible task that is 
proposed. 

To abolish grinding poverty, to out- 
wit the forces of corruption, actually 
to prevent preventable diseases, to plan 
cities for the comfort and well-being of 

8 9 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

the citizens, to take away from neces- 
sary labor unnecessary hardships and 
degradation, to prevent social deteriora- 
tion, [to distribute more equitably the 
rewards of industry — these are not the 
vague ideals of the sentimentalist: they 
are the specifications of work to be 
done; they involve problems which 
specialists are working on. 

A seventeenth-century poet ex- 
claimed : — 

O holy Hope and high Humility. 

To the holy hope of prophets and 
saints has been added the high humility 
of the man of science. There is nothing, 
he says, unreasonable in the hope, but it 
is to be fulfilled not after the apocalyptic 
manner, by a miraculous intervention of 
an unrelated force. It is to be wrought 
90 



SKILL 

out through patient experimentation. 
The civilization of to-day is the result 
of the work of the generations that have 
gone before us. They had high ideals, 
but imperfect knowledge and clumsy 
tools. They fell far short of their ideals. 
With greater knowledge and better tools 
and finer skill to use them, we and our 
children must certainty be able to ac- 
complish much which to them was 
impossible. 

The hope of the world lies in the fact 
that men are beginning to do intelli- 
gently what they have always attempted. 
It is less and less true that 

The good want power but to weep barren tears. 
The powerful goodness want : worse need for 

them. 
The wise want love, and those who love want 

wisdom ; 
And all best things are thus confused to ill. 

91 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

We are beginning to see that this di- 
vorce between the intellect and the con- 
science is not a fatalistic necessity of 
being. We cannot conceive of human 
progress save as we think of goodness 
grown wise and skillful. And when it 
grows wise and skillful, it grasps the 
lordship of the earth. 



Ill 

LOVE 

We have been watching successive 
phases of a great battle for human free- 
dom. We have seen a creature emerg- 
ing from the dust of the earth and at first 
hardly to be differentiated from other 
creatures, developing powers that are 
creative. At first merely passive under 
the moulding power of circumstances, 
man develops moral initiative. He no 
longer floats upon the current, he strug- 
gles against it. We first wonder at the 
audacity of the attempt, and then mar- 
vel at the increase of skill which it de- 
velops. We cannot, as we watch the 
long-continued effort, fail to see that 
93 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

human will and human intellect are 
steadily gaining. The strong wise man, 
in whose brain are the results of the ex- 
perience of the race, has emerged. This 
man does not cower before destiny, he 
is not overcome by the horror of great 
darkness. He has overcome a thousand 
difficulties. His courage has grown in- 
telligent and resourceful. Never has 
there been such consciousness of power. 

The triumphs of science mark the de- 
feat of the older forms of jfatalism. Hu- 
man effort is seen not to be futile but 
fruitful beyond the anticipation of the 
sages. Blind forces yield to will guided 
by intelligence. Man can outwit nature. 
Materialism of the old crude sort has 
become unthinkable. 

Just now philosophers are putting 
their emphasis not on the properties of 
94 



LOVE 

matter or on the invariable sequences of 
physics, but on the phenomena of life. 
Their philosophy is vitalistic rather 
than materialistic. We must study 
life at first hand, and not be content 
with analogies drawn from the inani- 
mate world. The living creature acts 
differently from the non-living thing. 
To be alive means to exercise mysteri- 
ous power, and the more alive any 
creature is the more the mystery 
deepens. 

A machine does the same thing over 
and over again. When we have thor- 
oughly understood it, we may make 
another machine which will be practi- 
cally identical with it and which will 
produce the same results. But this is 
not true of a living being. When we 
think we see identity, it is because our 

95 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

slow perceptions do not follow the 
marvelously quick changes which take 
place. It is like the conventional picture 
of a galloping horse. It does not repre- 
sent truly what actually takes place. 

Life persists and evolves as an endless 
succession of changes. These changes 
are unpredictable, because they depend 
upon the coincidence of so many forces. 
A knowledge of a lower form of life 
gives no answer to the question as to 
the emergence and survival of a higher 
form. What we call growth is a kind of 
change which baffles the understanding. 
The living creature is continually escap- 
ing from its old forms, and creating new 
ones. When we have watched the proc- 
ess we accept it as a fact. But no one, 
before the event, could have anticipated 
what was to take place. 

9 6 



LOVE 

Now when we turn to the contempla- 
tion of life and its ways, we are conscious 
that we are threatened with another form 
of fatalism. The vision comes of perpet- 
ual change through evolving life. Here 
is an impulse which moves us. But can 
we hope to master it? 

Courage and Skill are alike baffled. 
Milton speaks of " fixed fate." A brave 
man may defy a fixed fate. He may op- 
pose to it a fixed determination. There 
is something to resist. But Emerson 
expresses a more modern conception 
when he speaks of the "flowing fates." 
What if everything is in perpetual flux? 
Life is a river flowing through an ocean. 
We are not, as the materialist would say, 
the drops of water moved by the cur- 
rent. Our vital impulses move inani- 
mate things. Our lives are moving 

97 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

powers. But whither do they move? 
We are awed by the incalculable possi- 
bilities of our own natures. Below our 
consciousness we become aware of the 
"abysmal deeps of personality." 

With sufficient skill we can master 
machinery. It is something which in- 
tellect can invent and control. It is a 
case of the higher ruling the lower to 
its own good. But a vital process is dif- 
ferent. We cannot invent it. It does not 
yield its secret to thought. Life is con- 
tinually transcending itself. Its history 
is a succession of surprises. By the time 
you have described one phase of its 
development it has become something 
else. 

It is the instability of life that puzzles 
us. That which we try to grasp slips 
away from us and assumes a different 

9 8 



LOVE 

form. And we ourselves because we are 
alive are never the same. We awake in 
the morning to complete yesterday's 
task. But yesterday has vanished, and 
yesterday's enthusiasms. We cannot by 
taking thought restore the exact situa- 
tion. Is there not then a fatal necessity 
that nothing should really be finished, 
or if finished according to a former plan 
should not satisfy us ? 

A child busies himself constructing 
a play-house and filling it with all things 
which he thinks desirable. After a few 
years he returns to the work of his hands, 
a stranger to its joys. The years have 
brought disenchantment. He has out- 
grown his playthings. 

This is the tragedy of growth. It 
means the outgrowing of that which 
once gave satisfaction. We all feel it 

99 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

when we return after many years to once 
familiar places. But the process itself is 
a continuous one. It goes on from hour 
to hour, through innumerable, imper- 
ceptible transitions. 

It follows that the more definite our 
plans for the future the more certain we 
are to be disappointed. The mechanical 
arrangements we can control, and the 
results we can predict. Here everything 
can be well-timed. But what of our- 
selves and our friends whom we think 
of as enjoying the triumph? Who can 
predict the changes which may turn the 
expected joy into bitterness? 

When we come to follow closely the 
lives of able men whom we have looked 
upon as eminently successful, we often 
find that they themselves are over- 
whelmed with a sense of failure. It 
ioo 



LOVE 

is not that they have failed to achieve 
that which they intended, but that they 
have^ failed to receive the satisfaction 
they anticipated out of their achieve- 
ments. The very definiteness of their 
plans and the completeness of their ar- 
rangements leaves nothing further for 
them to do. Now that the thing they 
planned has been accomplished, it seems 
to have been inevitable. It is accepted 
and ignored as one of the mass of com- 
monplace facts. 

But while they have been working 
diligently and efficiently, other things 
have happened which they, in their ab- 
sorption in their own affairs, have not 
noticed. These other happenings have 
also their results, and a new condition 
has arisen, and a new standard of 
values. 

IOI 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

It is as if a merchant-adventurer had, 
with a rich cargo in the hold, set out on 
a voyage to a distant market. Many are 
the tempests through which the good 
ship passes. The skillful mariner finds 
his way in safety along perilous coasts. 
At last he enters the desired haven, 
only to find the market overstocked. 
There is no demand for what he has 
with such difficulty carried around the 
world. The cargo is safe but it has lost 
a large part of its value. 

This is the common experience of the 
able man of affairs. The things which, 
when he was doing them, seemed so 
important, once accomplished seem to 
sink into utter insignificance. 

Many a great man of business ac- 
cumulates wealth, not from any sordid 
motive, but in order to enjoy, as he sup- 
102 



LOVE 

poses, the increased consideration of his 
fellow-men. It is to him the symbol 
of power. But while he is gaining it the 
ethical standards of the community have 
changed. The methods which in his 
youth were admired as indications of 
shrewdness, are looked upon with re- 
probation. He has outlived his genera- 
tion, and stands a pathetic lonely figure 
exposed to a kind of criticism which he 
cannot understand. The very genuine- 
ness of his self-revelations adds to the 
pathos of the situation. It is one of the 
tragedies of ethical progress. Something 
has happened to rob him of the satisfac- 
tions of success and he does not know 
what it is. 

A similar fatality is seen in the man- 
agement of the most intimate and sacred 
relation of life. The making of a home 
103 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

requires the exercise of intelligence. 
Many are those who undertake to teach 
the high art. And yet it is a notorious 
fact that many of those who are most 
intelligent and conscientious make a 
miserable failure in attaining happi- 
ness. 

In all the mechanical arrangements for 
giving comfort they exhibit skill. In all 
that is formal in conduct they are be- 
yond reproach. Whatever is in its na- 
ture definite in the relation between 
husband and wife, parents and children, 
is carefully attended to. But there is an 
indefinite something that eludes all the 
well-meant efforts. 

A man of strong will and clear judg- 
ment attempts to train his children 
in the way in which they should go. 
He surrounds them with all influences 
104 



LOVE 

which commend themselves as good. 
He has a very definite plan for their 
careers, and furnishes them with means 
for fitting them to succeed. He has a 
keen eye for what he calls " advantages." 
Education is a game of skill, and he is 
the player. Each move is carefully con- 
sidered, with all its consequences. 

But after a time he begins to realize 
that the game is not so simple as he had 
imagined. Each piece upon his chess- 
board is alive and develops a will of its 
own. While he is considering how he 
shall move them next, they are making 
a hundred moves for themselves. And 
the moves have been so quick and un- 
expected that his intelligence cannot 
follow them. Each child has a tempera- 
ment of its own, and reacts in its own 
way. Every year the confusion grows 

i°5 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

greater as their natures increase in com- 
plexity. 

At last the fateful day comes when 
the father for the last time attempts to 
exert his authority. He gives a com- 
mand to his child, expecting prompt and 
complete obedience. But the child is no 
longer there. He is confronted by an- 
other man, his equal, perhaps his su- 
perior, in strength of will. 

The great benefactors of mankind 
have experienced the same kind of be- 
wilderment. Very seldom have they 
enjoyed the fruit of their labors in the 
way they imagined. The dramatic mo- 
ment of complete triumph never comes. 

The story of great inventors has had 
always an element of personal disap- 
pointment. It is not merely that they 
have at times been robbed of their right- 
106 



LOVE 

ful rewards by unscrupulous promoters. 
The difficulty is deeper than that. No 
invention is as original as its inventor 
thinks it is. When after years of patient 
groping he announces his great discov- 
ery, he finds that many others have been 
working on very much the same lines. 
He is but one of a great company. He 
was lonely while he was at work,*his 
success he must share with a crowd. 
And when his invention has been made, 
there are those who can improve upon 
it. The more important his contribution 
to thought is, the more quickly it is 
absorbed in the common stock of the 
world. 

In pure science the greatest men are 

often unknown to the great public. They 

discover some principle which suggests 

to other minds practical applications, 

107 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

which they themselves may not have 
seen or thought important. Their con- 
tributions do not remain as a body of 
truth to be called by their own name. 
They are forgotten while their work 
becomes the property of mankind. 

Even when their names remain they 
are not connected with their real per- 
sonality. George Eliot, in " The Legend 
of Jubal," recites such an experience. 
Jubal, the inventor of instruments of 
music, in his old age traveled far in 
search of inspiration. At last there came 
the desire to return to his home and en- 
joy the triumph due to him. 

M No farther will I travel : once again 
My brethren I will see, and that fair plain 
Where I and Song were born. There fresh- 
voiced youth 
Will pour my strains with all the early truth 

1 08 



LOVE 

Which now abides not in my voice and hands, 
But only in the soul, the will that stands 
Helpless to move. My tribe remembering 
Will cry, i 'T is he ! ' and run to greet me, wel- 
coming." 

Jubal came at last to the land where his 

great work had been done. 

For still he hoped to find the former things, 
And the warm gladness recognition brings. 

But alas, instead of such warm recogni- 
tion of his worth, 

He saw dread Change, with dubious face and 

cold, 
That never kept a welcome for the old, 
Like some strange heir upon the hearth, arise, 
Saying, u This home is mine." 

At length he heard the instruments 
of music, and youths and maidens, w r ith 
lyres and cymbals and flutes, danced in 
their glad festival. The old man's ardor 
was aroused, and led him to self-asser- 
tion. 

109 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

All was forgotten but the burning need 
To claim his fuller self, to claim the deed 
That lived away from him, and grew apart, 
While he as from a tomb, with lonely heart, 
Warmed by no meeting glance, no hand that 

pressed, 
Lay chill amid the life his life had blessed. 

Then he cried with a loud voice, "I 
am Jubal, I! — I made the lyre!" 

But the years had separated Jubal not 
only from his work but from his fame. 
His name had become the name not of a 
person but of an Art. For him to claim 
it was profanation. 

The multitude was first merry and 
then angry over his preposterous claim. 
At last 

Two rushed upon him : two, the most devout 
In honor of great Jubal, thrust him out, 
And beat him with their flutes. 

When we turn from History to Biog- 
no 



LOVE 

raphy we learn the bitter meaning of 
the legend. It lies in the fact that men 
are by the mere fact of living disas- 
sociated from their own works. The 
historian follows a great movement. It 
begins in the fervent desire of a few 
obscure men. It gains disciples, it en- 
lists in its behalf able leaders. It in- 
spires to all sorts of heroic sacrifices. At 
last the good cause triumphs. It seems 
a record of orderly progress from be- 
ginning to end. 

But we turn to the life-history of any 
leader in the movement, and we have a 
different impression. If he happens to 
live long we are conscious of an anti- 
climax. There is a period when the 
man and his cause -coincide. The re- 
former is the perfect embodiment of the 
reform to which he gives his energies, 
in 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

He is lifted above himself, and his name 
at the same time stands for a person and 
a principle. 

So for a dramatic moment Luther 
expressed the yearnings for liberty in 
the minds of the German people. He 
was the Reformation. So Mazzini, and 
afterwards Garibaldi, had moments in 
their lives when they personally re- 
alized the aspirations of the New Italy. 
So John Bright in his great days identi- 
fied himself completely with all that was 
generous and progressive in English 
politics. 

But the time came when the move- 
ments developed on lines which the 
early leaders had not anticipated, and 
took on forms strange to them. Luther 
was almost driven to distraction by the 
various sects which arose from his brave 
112 



LOVE 

insistence upon the right of private 
judgment. It was no longer Luther's 
reformation, but the reformation of the 
sixteenth century that went on. And it 
went on in many strange ways which to 
the great reformer seemed destructive 
of all religion. 

Italian unity came, but not in the way 
that either Mazzini or Garibaldi ap- 
proved. They lived long enough to real- 
ize that they were only tools used for a 
certain purpose, and then thrown aside. 
Other workmen with other tools took 
up the work which had once been theirs. 

Even John Bright, the most success- 
ful of reformers, lived long enough to 
find himself out of sympathy with the 
party of advance. The definite reforms 
to which he had given his life had been 
accepted as a part of the existing order. 

"3 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

But a new generation had arisen with 
its own ideals and purposes. With these 
he had little sympathy or understand- 
ing. The eloquent agitator had to ap- 
pear to them as a reactionary. 

What is the common element in all 
these instances? In each case the disap- 
pointment comes from something inher- 
ent -in the vital process. There is a 
change which we are not prepared for. 
A man who does a good deed cannot put 
it in a safe deposit vault to be given back 
to him when he calls for it. The deed 
once done is his no longer. It enters 
into the life of the world and is trans- 
formed beyond his recognition. It be- 
comes a " good diffused." 

The fate of Jubal was that of one who 
wrought better than he knew. Had he 
114 



LOVE 

invented a lyre upon which no one but 
himself could play, his fame would have 
been secure, — and his art would have 
perished with him. He would have been 
remembered as a miracle worker. He 
did a wonderful thing which could never 
be repeated. 

But he invented instruments upon 
which others could make music and 
which they could improve upon. And so 
the art grew and the importance of his 
personality diminished. 

Here then we have the complaint 
against the vital process itself. It is that 
it has no stability of form. It is a per- 
petual change which interferes with our 
possession of the fruits of our own labor. 
The ambitious man is like a collector of 
beautiful works of art, who has no place 
to put the treasures he has gathered. He 

"5 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

can do nothing with them but give them 
away. 

Now so long as our aims end in our- 
selves all this seems very sad. We are 
cheated out of what belongs to us. 
c But what if another impulse should 
take possession of us so that we no 
longer should seek to have everything 
end in ourselves? What if we should 
come to care supremely for something 
quite beyond ourselves, and relate every- 
thing to that? Immediately what had 
been our grievance becomes our oppor- 
tunity. 

Now that great transforming impulse 
is that to which we give the name of 
Love. It is that which disenthralls a 
man by making him free from the tram- 
mels of his own selfishness. "Love 
seeketh not its own" Love chooses to 
116 



LOVE 

share the good it finds. It rejoices in its 
ability to give away all that has been 
given to it. 

It is love and only love that can fol- 
low life through all its changes. It is 
not bound to a single form, but says 
"Whither thou goest I will go." It is 
a new kind of consciousness which 
changes our relation to all that is about 
us. It gives us something which no 
amount of intelligence can give. 

Let us imagine a great tree in which 
roots and trunk and branches and leaves 
have come to consciousness. The sepa- 
rate parts realize their own existence 
and their own special functions. The 
intelligent root delves in the earth pur- 
posefully^ and rejoices when it has 
found its food. The leaf knows itself to 
117 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

be what it is, and watches eagerly the 
processes of its own growth. By and by 
the sense of responsibility comes, and 
each acquires skill and does its ap- 
pointed work better. And each out of its' 
own limited experience reasons. Each 
draws inferences from what has hap- 
pened in its own sphere, and ventures 
upon large generalizations. The leaf 
argues that other leaves have functions 
like its own. They belong to a compre- 
hensible order. But of the roots that 
burrow in the dark places, and are never 
gay in the sunshine, it knows, and can 
know, nothing. They do not belong to 
the intelligible world. And after a time 
the wind grows chill, and it sees its 
fellow leaves, its summer companions, 
grow faint and let go their hold upon 
the branches, and float away it knows 

n8 



LOVE 

not whither. This then is the end of 
all. There is nothing further of which 
it is conscious. It only knows that it is 
fated so to be. At any moment its turn 
may come, as it goes the way of all the 
living. 

The reasoning, we say, was valid as far 
as it went,but the experience on which it 
was founded was not complete. The 
leaf was conscious of itself ] but it was 
not conscious of itself as a part of the 
tree. The thrill of the larger life would 
have changed resignation into the joy- 
ous acceptance of a high privilege. 

Suppose the tree consciousness were 
to take possession of the leaf. It would 
be an overpowering sense of vital energy 
going out in all directions. The same 
power which makes the buds swell 
upon the twigs, works underground in 
119 



[THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

the hungry roots. The seasons come 
and go but the tree makes increase of 
itself. Everything is thought of in its re- 
lation to this wonderful life. 

Now that is the kind of consciousness 
that we call love. It is the consciousness 
of ourselves not as isolated individuali- 
ties but as sharers in a larger life. It is 
the immediate apprehension of an indi- 
visible whole. To one who has entered 
into this consciousness everything has a 
new value. It is valued not for what it 
brings in, this is a comparatively worth- 
less residuum; but for what it enables 
one to give. 

Nor does love, when it has been puri- 
fied from grosser elements, attach itself 
merely to the present form. The fond 
mother may indeed sometimes say that 
she wishes her child might never grow 
120 



LOVE 

up, but always remain dependent on her 
care. But she knows that is not true love 
but only selfishness. The mother fol- 
lows her child through all the growing 
years, rejoicing in his increasing strength. 
And when the hour of parting comes 
and the son goes forth to try his fortunes 
in the world, the mother love grows 
stronger. It is a power which overcomes 
the influence of change. And as it is said 
of love that it " seeketh not its own," so 
it is said that it "taketh not account of 
evil." This does not mean that it denies 
the existence of evil. Evil is treated as 
irrelevant. Love taketh no account of 
evil, not because it does not see it but 
because it sees through it. Sin, sorrow, 
suffering — these are facts which are 
opaque to the cold understanding. But 
there are other rays that shine through 
121 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

them, finding no obstruction. Love sees 
the perfect through the imperfect; it 
discerns " the soul of goodness in things 
evil." 

This clairvoyance is manifest in all 
finer judgments. There is a selective 
power which unerringly finds excel- 
lence. Two persons are looking at a 
picture. One looks at it unimaginatively 
and unappreciatively. He sees that the 
canvas is old, the colors are faded, 
there are obvious defects of drawing. 
Seeing these things he passes the pic- 
ture with contempt. He can justify his 
scorn by a catalogue of the details 
which offend him. But after the fault- 
finder there comes an enthusiastic lover 
of art. Does he not see the defects? 
Yes; but he takes no account of them. 
They do not interfere with his enjoy- 

122 



LOVE 

ment. The picture represents an im- 
portant stage in the development of art. 
It is from the hand of a master. The 
master shared with his contemporaries 
many faults, and he had mannerisms of 
his own. But his genius shines through. 

When true artists are talking together 
how joyous and free they are! It is be- 
cause each is conscious of something 
beyond what he himself has accom- 
plished. There are so many different 
forms of beauty, and varying degrees 
of excellence. They are not seeking 
uniformity. They are exploring a pleas- 
ant region where each turn of the road 
has a charm of its own. 

The lover of Nature has the same ex- 
perience. What he delights in is not 
the perfection of a single form, but the 
wonder of an endless process. He is 
123 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

pleased with the exuberance of life. 
There are many things which interfere 
with his comfort; and he is glad that 
it is so. There are weeds and thorns, 
there are thickets hard to penetrate, 
there are wild things that hide them- 
selves at his approach. But these things 
do not irritate him. He is soothed and 
inspired by[the manifold life around him, 
and of which he is a part. 

The same thing is true in regard to 
human intercourse. The philanthropist 
and the misanthropist have before them 
precisely the same facts. One may be 
as realistic as the other. But their minds 
react differently. Human nature in its 
actual imperfectness is the theme of all 
realistic literature. 

The unloving realist declares that he 
will rid his mind of all sentimentality 
124 



LOVE 

and show us human character as it actu- 
ally is. With painstaking art he repro- 
duces an actual situation. He lays bare 
the working of the mind, and points out 
the unworthy motives which enter into 
acts which we had been taught to ad- 
mire. He analyzes the conventional 
hero and reveals the sordid elements in 
his nature. He reveals every weakness 
which mars his best endeavor. Then 
with cold impartiality he passes judg- 
ment on the sum total of the qualities 
which he has discovered. It is a piti- 
able showing. 

Then we turn to the really great 
works of literature. The man of genius 
— just because he has genius — is one 
who not only sees clearly, but loves the 
thing he sees. He makes no attempt to 
disguise the imperfection which be- 

I2 5 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

longs to all that is human. He is no 
apologist for things as they are. This 
is a world in which men sin and suf- 
fer for their sins. He does not give 
us an expurgated edition of the uni- 
verse. There are ugly facts and un- 
tamed passions and unanswered ques- 
tions. The real world is so big that it 
is easy to lose one's way in it. The 
wisest lose their way often and only by 
much effort find it again. Human nature 
is complex and character is not adjusted 
to circumstance with mechanical pre- 
cision. The actual course of human con- 
duct is never as straight as it appears in 
the moral tale. There are many devious 
windings and strange surprises. There 
is a seamy side even to the lives of 
saints, and great men do not always 
retain the heroic attitude* 
126 



LOVE 

But all this is of little importance to 
the lover of mankind. His heart was not 
set ona,monotony of excellence. He is 
free and cheerful in the presence of 
human imperfection. He is with eager 
eyes watching a vital process. He does 
not see perfect creatures, but he sees 
something which to him is much more 
appealing. He sees imperfect creatures 
striving for a more perfect form of ex- 
istence. He sees them under all varieties 
of circumstance tending upward. Their 
very mistakes and failures make them 
dear to him. He rejoices in their small 
successes. He sees those whose lives 
havebeenmost disappointing in moments 
of heroism. These sudden flashes reveal 
their real selves. He sees how men learn 
from their mistakes. They are always 
blundering, but the same blunders are 
127 



THREE LORDS OF DESTINY 

not precisely repeated. He comes to 
feel that the obstacles in the path of hu- 
manity are great but not insuperable. 

O benefit of ill, now I find true 
That better is by evil still made better 
And ruined love when it is built anew 
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far 
greater. 

This doctrine of "the benefit of ill" is not 
the fatalistic doctrine that evil of itself 
works for good. It is rather the belief 
in the supremacy of love, the power that 
turns all things to its own uses. Out of 
old ruins it is continually building new 
and fairer habitations for itself. 

We have tried to show that liberty is 
not a gift of Nature. It is an achieve- 
ment. A man is free in proportion to 
his Courage, Skill, and Love. These are 
the Lords of Destiny. 
128 



LOVE 

To choose one's own path and to abide 
by the decision, to follow an inner light, 
to resist the world's threat and fashion 
— this is to gain independence. It is the 
achievement of simple courage. 

To study and observe, to make use of 
the accumulated experience of mankind, 
to become inventive and skillful in all 
good works, this is to gain mastery 
over natural forces. 

To give one's self to others, to rejoice 
in the good that one does not seek to 
monopolize, to follow life lovingly 
through all its bewildering changes, to 
rejoice in all its variety and richness — 
this is to be free indeed. It is through 
love to "lay hold on eternal life." 

THE ^END 



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